Tour of the CommunityCause.org Website

Welcome to CommunityCause.org! We are glad that you are interested in joining us in the effort to Make a Positive Difference!

This is a 100% volunteer run website that is being built by you, with you and for our community. All we need is a few good people to do great things! Are you one of them? Are you willing to share your time, talents, experience & expertise to Make the World a Better Place?

***CommunityCause.org is a Makerspace, a creative & collaborative online Coworking Space, that provides DIY features & tools that individuals & organizations may use to get community help and make a positive difference in the world. We are a crowdsourcing website like Wikipedia. When you send in a “Request for Help” or Share Information & Resources in our Comment Section, you are directly communicating with hundreds of like minded community volunteers who share your interests & need or offer assistance with Community Projects. Together We Can Make a Positive Difference in Our Community & in the World! ***

.

CommunityCause.org offers altruistic individuals, philanthropic organizations, social entrepreneurs & innovators a Dashboard of Features, a “toolbox”, that will help to get your ideas, innovations, needs or services out to a wider audience. We democratize change by making it easier for individuals, groups and small organizations to make a bigger impact. We help you to do what you want to do…better, faster, cheaper and do it more effectively, efficiently & effortlessly.

CommunityCause.org is an online accelerator of Good Ideas, Products, Services & Innovations. We amplify the message about your services or needs and quickly get the word out to the community!

CommunityCause.org is an online incubator of Community Projects, Philanthropic Organizations & Startups. The community volunteers assisting with CommunityCause.org help you to get the resources you need to solve social and environmental problems.

CommunityCause.org operates like an information “relay station”. We get your message to a wider audience by “boosting” the “signal” about what you need or the services you provide. We help “transmit” the information that you give us by using social media and personal contacts. The wants & needs of you or your organization go out through the grapevine and end up in front of the eyes of an entirely new group of individuals & organizations who can help you!

Through the use of crowdsourcing and the curation of open sourceinformation, we help you get the help you need with less wear & tear on you, your organization and/or your volunteer base. By using the features on the CommunityCause.org you communicate directly with the community volunteers helping with this website. Your information goes beyond “just preaching to the choir” to your current contacts and reaches new ears, new eyes & new people willing to help! Your message reaches new people who share your interests, already know how to “sing” but who do not yet know about your “choir”!

Best of all…it is completely Free! 🙂 No one at CommunityCause.org is making any money. We are all volunteers who just want to Help Make the World a Better Place by using our time & talents to have as much positive impact as possible! We strive to support good ideas and Community Projects by using the web platform at CommunityCause.org to communicate across “silos” & harness the power of the “grapevine”.

When you utilize the features of the CommunityCause.org web platform you will be communicating with various types of philanthropic organizations and scores of community volunteers who want to help! We all cooperate and coordinate efforts and, just like at your place of work where the website for the customers is “pretty” and the back end for employee information where the “gets the job done” is functional but not “pretty”, CommunityCause.org shows you the back end of the web site where stuff gets done. All altruistic individuals and organizations can cooperate & coordinate using the Free online features to begin to create positive change & connect with like-minded others.

Think of our website CommunityCause.org as a megaphone. You access our community volunteers who act like your extra staff helping to amplify whatever it is that you are doing!

Let us Take you on a Tour of the CommunityCause.org Website. You may click on any of the purple links below to learn more about each major feature of the website.

*********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
To Navigate this website and find relevant pages, please use the “Search this Website” feature at the Top Right Side of this Page. For Best Results: Type Keywords to Get a Checklist of Helpful Tips: Noun + Home Page: (Eg.Volunteer Home Page, Dog Home Page) or Adjective + Noun + Help: (Eg. Veteran Benefits Help, Lost Dog Help, Residential Solar Help) Noun + Help (Eg. Nonprofit Help, Startup Help) You may just type in any keyword to search & navigate to your desired destination! You may also use the drop down menu tabs or click on the hyperlinks on any page. There are many tips for searching for ways to Give Help—Click Here! or to Get Help–Click Here!
*********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

CommunityCause.org provides 8 Major Categories of Services. All Services are FREE!! We want to provide a web platform that helps you, your organization and our community:

You Can Make a Positive Difference in the World by Helping with a Community Project! Create a new project that solves a social or environmental problem. Find a project to support that you are passionate about and share tips, information & resources. Join in the Brainstorming and modern day Barnstorming experience! By sharing your volunteer time, your expertise & your donated items, you can go a long way toward making a Community Project a Success!

This feature operates like Kickstarter, Indiegogo, GoFundMe, only the creators of Community Projects ask for the expertise, donated items, information, volunteers, connections and other resources that they need for the project to be a success. Because people meet & join together to create real world Community Projects that solve a social or environmental problem, this feature is a lot like Meetup.com that links like minded individuals passionate about an interest only people “meetup” to cooperate & coordinate efforts to create projects that help the community by sharing their time, talents, tips or resources.

Would you like some help finding answers to your questions or solutions for any issues? The Concierge Service provides recommendations for the Best Pathway to Assistance, a Checklist of What to Do to solve common situations and a Decision Making Tree that can assist you in finding helpful resources & solutions for your situation. Simply type the keywords that interest you into the “Search this Website” and you will find all pages that are relevant to your keyword search.

This feature operates like Wikipedia because all of our website pages have been created by community volunteers through crowdsourcing of information, only the individuals who contribute to our web pages share their best tips, advice, information, resources, experience and expertise in specific topic areas that solve a social or environmental problem. By combining the knowledge of these altruistic people together, we can resolve situations and solve problems better, faster, cheaper and more effectively & efficiently than we could do alone.

The templates are how these sections will eventually look. We would appreciate any feedback or recommendations on these templates. What should we change and what should we add? Please send us a comment.

Would you like some phone or online help from volunteer experts who have some experience with the subject matter that is tougher than our “Concierge Service” can solve? Need Help Cutting through Red Tape? This Volunteer “Help Desk” & Ombudsman Service is offered by members of the public who are community volunteer “navigators”. The Neighborhood Resource Person at the “Help Desk” is a local community volunteer who is someone that you can correspond with directly for help on specific issues that are routine for them but new for you. The Ombudsman Service is for more complicated problems.

This feature operates like an online “thread” or a “Forum”, only the people helping with this feature are very altruistic community volunteers committed to sharing their time, talent, experience & expertise in order to help you get the help & answers that you are seeking. Please click the purple link below that is most relevant to your specific question or concern. To Get Help–Just Ask…

***To Learn More & Contact the Neighborhood Resource Person “Help Desk” Volunteer Navigator—Click Here! If you have a very routine question, situation or “procedure” issue that is a common issue that people face, but you are unsure how to proceed, you may request help from a Neighborhood Resource Person who can guide you through the process. The community volunteer navigator we call a “Neighborhood Resource Person” is available to answer easier, routine questions.

Examples of what a Neighborhood Resource Person (a volunteer navigator at the “Help Desk”) does are these: Help a person adopt a rescued dog/find a lost dog, Guide someone through the process of putting solar panels on their house, Assist a Veteran in getting the benefits they qualify for or Walk a person through the process of incorporating as a nonprofit organization. These are routine procedures and people with experience & expertise with the issue can easily assist you in successfully navigating the process.

***To Learn More & Contact the Ombudsman Service Help Desk—Click Here! If you have a very difficult or complicated question or situation, an Ombudsman community volunteer is someone who can help you navigate the complexities of a system to help you get answers or achieve the results that you need. They give you suggestions & help you to cut through “red tape”. This is an online Community or Forum where Ombudsmen community volunteers can assist you with tougher situations that are more complicated, difficult to solve & require a higher level of experience or expertise.

The Neighborhood Resource Person and the Ombudsman Service are specifically for use with questions, situations or issues that are tougher to solve and not covered by the Concierge Service mentioned above.

The Directory of Services and Organizations helps you to locate the exact organizations that provide the services you need to handle specific situations. You can also use the Directory to identify organizations that need volunteers, interns, mentors, donated items and donated funds to help their community.

This feature operates like LinkedIn, an online social networking tool used for business & professional networking, only we are linking together the philanthropic organizations and the individual Super Altruists amongst us. This feature also operates like Facebook, only we post Community Projects & community events in order to connect philanthropic organizations that share similar interests to each other and to the volunteers & resources that organizations need to help them solve social and environmental problems. This feature also operates like Community Information & Referral and the Yellow pages, only on steroids…much better, more current & accurate and more efficient!!!

***View Advanced Search Options in the Directory Advanced search helps you to pinpoint the exact type of organization you are searching for with scalpel-like precision. Please be sure to scroll down the page to see the results of your search.

The Directory of Services and Organizations will help local businesses to find nonprofits to support and through it philanthropic groups can connect & cooperate with like-minded organizations and individuals in their effort to fulfill their mission & help their community.

This is a type of “triage” system. It is meant to get help, expertise, donated items, information & resources to the individuals & organizations that need them. There are a wide variety of Community Response System (CRS) projects running. Receive assistance from community volunteers interested in using their expertise through the Community Skill Bank . Receive helpful alerts when specific items are needed or donations become available by subscribing to follow the projects that can fulfill those requests.

This feature operates like Twitter communicating short bursts of information in real time, only this feature is used to deploy community volunteers, donated items, needed services, information or resources to the individuals and organizations that need them. This feature also operates like a 911 call center that sends help where it is needed, only our service handles non emergency situations that nevertheless need a rapid community response in order to provide assistance and resolve a situation.

***Become a Community Volunteer that Helps with the Community Response System!

——–>Offer Your Assistance by Volunteering Your Time, Your Talents, Your Experience & Your Expertise. There are several types of Specialized Volunteers listed below. Our Free Volunteer Matching Service will Help Connect You! Get Started by Filling Out a“I Want to Volunteer” Form–Click Here!

***Community Computer Volunteers Choose from requests for computer help from philanthropic organizations and decide if you would like to help. All it takes is access to a computer. You can help whenever and wherever you prefer!

***Community Phone Volunteers Choose from requests for phone help from philanthropic organizations and decide if you would like to help. All it takes is access to a phone. You decide which volunteer oppourtunities you want to help!

***On Call Community Volunteers There are a variety of on call community volunteers. Requests for help come in along with the date, time and location. You get to decide when and if you can help. Help out when it fits in with your schedule! Every little action you take to help makes a difference!

***Short Term Community Volunteers There are a variety of on call community volunteers. Requests for help come in along with the date, time and location. You get to decide when and if you can help. Help out when it fits in with your schedule! Every little action you take to help makes a difference!

***Instant Volunteer Opportunities—Coming Soon! Have a few hours or a day this weekend or even today to volunteer? Check the Calendar of Events to see the events, programs or social services that need an extra pair of hands right away. You can help today or any day you have free time available!

***View the Community Skill Bank of Free Help There are many professions and skill sets represented. Click on the link to find information on the various “Help for a Cause” Community Skill Bank projects currently running that rely on specific talents, experience and expertise in order to help individuals and philanthropic organizations in our community. Request assistance or share your skills, talents & expertise.

***View the Classified Ads for the Community Skill Bank of Free Help You may want to check the classified ads section of our website if you need specific skills or are offering specific skills for Free to the public. Please click on the words “All Sub Categories” to see all of the Community Skill Bank options. In the classified ad section you may post an ad with your skill or communicate directly with people who have offered to share their skills with others.

An easy way to view all CRS projects is to go Home–Click Here! Simply hit control F, type in CRS, scroll down the page and all of the Community Response System (CRS) projects running will be highlighted.

***You May Activate the Community Response System to Request Help for a specific Community Project that You Have Created! –Get Help/Give Help***

The Community Response System (CRS) feature may be utilized whenever you have created any type of Community Project (View Descriptions) The Community Response System is activated as soon as a Request for Help comes in from an individual or from a participating philanthropic organization. The way to get started is to Create a Community Project! Helping Hands projects (Assisting individuals, families or groups in need) are often used to Activate the Community Response System, although any project can be used to access the system. Simply fill out and submit the project application form and the Community Response System (CRS) will get to work on helping you! Please Click to View all Categories of Help Available & Requests for Help

Our Community Builders Service Goal is to Create Connections, Network, Get the Word Out, Get People Involved and, generally, Build Community Support around specific causes or issues. There are several different parts to our Community Builders Service that you can help to support. You can start helping right now from your home computer!

This feature operates like a big project at any big company with different employees and departments helping to work on specific parts of some bigger job, only these are often online, virtual projects that are accomplished through crowdsourcing where everyone jumps in and helps when & where they can. People share their time, talent and expertise to achieve a greater mission…to build community! Community volunteers working in the Community Builders Service gain meaning, achieve a higher purpose and make the world a better place right from their home computer or by spending just a few hours a week!

Join the Speakers Bureau to go out into the community and offer classes & workshops that increase awareness about a specific issue, teach about the community resources that are available & provide helpful tips for resolving common situations.

Join the Club! Connect, meet & network with like minded others who are passionate about the same cause. Join the Club! helps you to get the word out about events, classes, services & opportunities of interest that you or your organization offer. You also receive updates that others have posted that may be of interest to you and helpful for our community. Stay up to date on all of the happenings relevant to the causes you are passionate about.

Ambassadors for a Cause attend a class, learn details about a topic and then help friends, family and colleagues. For example, Ambassadors for Dogs learn what to do for a lost, found or unwanted dog. They also learn where the low cost vaccination, spay & neuter and other resources are.

Our Community Resource Connector Service has as its Goal to Create Connections between resources & the people and organizations that need them. The Community Resource Connector Service (CRC) helps you find resources including Human Resources & Volunteers, Material Resources & Donations as well as the Information Resources that are needed to Help You Solve Social and Environmental problems.

This feature operates like Freelancer.com, only we provide an online, fast, easy & effective way for organizations to connect with the volunteer workers they need in order to complete their projects and solve a social or environmental problem.

This feature also operates like Craigslist.org that lists items/services available & items/services needed, only our classified ads are more pertinent to altruistic individuals and organizations that are trying to solve a social or environmental problem. The categories of classified ads have been developed to be especially helpful for those with a philanthropic mission.

There are several different parts to our Community Resource Connector Service:

***Post or Search Classified Want Ads Find help locating the volunteers, donated items, resources & information you or your organization needs to solve social or environmental problems. Find organizations that you can Help!

***Participate in the Lending Library Borrow items you need to help solve social or environmental problems. Lend out items for others to borrow that will help individuals & organizations.

***Find a Project to Support Please peruse the Community Projects on this website to see what volunteers, expertise, information & donated items are needed and see what you may be able to contribute to make that project a success.

***Group Purchase Projects for Negotiation Power For more details, please click the purple heading. To view the currently running Group Purchase Projects–Click Here! These projects allow people to network with the virtual community to gain negotiation power when purchasing materials or services! If you are an individual, group, or organization that needs specific supplies or services for a project that you are working on that would solve a Social or Environmental problem, Create a Group Purchase Project!

***Through the Community Resource Connector Service you will Find out what Help & Resources these Organizations in our Community have to offer individuals, groups (Veterans, Children, Seniors, Animals, etc.) and other local organizations. Click each link to see what Help & Resources are available & provided by each ***Business*** / ***University & College*** / ***Nonprofits*** / ***School*** / ***Government Agency*** / ***Faith Community*** / ***Indian Tribe***

In addition, CommunityCause.org creates several ready made newsletters that you can send out to others via the social media buttons on each page. Will you help us to get the word out?

***View the Volunteer Gazette See what help local philanthropic organizations need. There are many opportunities to Make a Difference in your community. Volunteering even a few hours a month helps!

***View the Donation Wish List See the items that organizations need in order to fulfill their mission. Any ideas on where these items can be obtained? Do you have links to organizations that can provide them?

***View the Grapevine Newsletter See what connections you can make between the people you know and the individuals & organizations that are working to solve social or environmental problems. You may have the crucial puzzle piece that provides the needed link!

Each provides details about the specific help, information & resource needs of the individuals & organizations in our community. Will you help us to get the word out? Will you send these newsletters out to friends, colleagues & family members who may be interested in helping? The social media buttons on each of the newsletter pages make sharing easy! Thank you for helping your community!

Community Goals are proposed by individuals & organizations that specialize in a specific topic area. All like minded individuals & organizations come together to cooperate, collaborate & coordinate their efforts around the cause specific Community Goal. This enables us to solve social and environmental problems better, faster, cheaper and more effectively.

Community Goals become an effort that we can all rally around. Everyone is made aware of the projects that others are working on that pertain to and support the specific goal. Thus, we are able to avoid duplication of effort and spot gaps in service. There are state goals, county goals, city goals, group goals and cause specific goals that may be proposed.

There are also a variety of features set up to assist with Community Solutions:

***************************************************************************************************************************There is also this general search feature that helps you to successfully Get Help–Find Answers & Solve Problems–Create Solutions and Give Help.

These links provide a variety of ways to navigate this website to the desired destination that meets your needs. Good Luck! Thanks for wanting to be involved in your community! You are an important piece of the puzzle in solving social & environmental problems.